Election Day, an event that many have been eagerly waiting for, has finally arrived. While many people have already voted — many states are seeing record highs for people filling out absentee ballots ahead of today, according to the Washington Post — most Americans will still vote on the actual day of the election, which is today.
A lot of people, including celebrities, news personalities, and more, have been trying to get people to vote. Taylor Swift famously did so in October. After she posted her thoughts on voting (as well as endorsements for Democratic candidates), registration numbers, especially among young people, went through the roof, as previous reporting from the Inquisitr detailed.
Now, with Election Day having arrived, the push to “get out the vote” (oftentimes abbreviated to GOTV, in case you have seen that abbreviation elsewhere and didn’t know) is taking hold in a big way. One of the biggest companies in the world, Google, is getting into the game itself, encouraging people who visit the search page to vote on Tuesday.
How are they doing so? The iconic “Google” banner, which typically adorns that search page, has gone missing. In its place, the words “Go Vote” have been put up, in the color scheme of the usual Google logo.
Google homepage today. Do it. pic.twitter.com/CTCKwqqgOL
— Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) November 6, 2018
Clicking the Google – er, “Go Vote” banner – will land users of the site to a search results page that will help identify where they need to go to vote for their particular address if they enter it into a separate search bar. It will also explain what the voting process is for that particular jurisdiction, giving people the option to read about it in either English or Spanish, according to reporting from CNET
Although these are midterm elections, meaning the races on ballots across the nation do not have a presidential race on them, there’s still plenty of reasons to vote. All 435 House of Representatives seats are up for election, as are 35 seats in the Senate. There are also 39 gubernatorial races happening today.
Voting is a right that hasn’t always been around for everyone. It was denied to so many groups of people over the years, initially only being a right for a white male with property when the nation was founded, according to Business Insider . Women only got the right to vote in 1920, and it wasn’t until 1965 that protections were put into place that effectively put a halt to blatantly racist Jim Crow laws that restricted African-Americans from voting.
So take the right seriously today, recognizing that you have the chance to shape your own government. It wasn’t always a right everyone had, so don’t waste it!
